Former Tunisian Regime Goes Beyond Spying On Internet Traffic... To Rewriting Emails & More
from the they-wrote-what??? dept
Most people instinctively appreciate the dangers of government surveillance. But at least it's possible to be on your guard when you suspect such surveillance may be present by taking care what you write and send. You might even use some industrial-grade encryption for the important stuff.
The problem with that is it's simply not practical to expect all of your contacts – to say nothing of your grandparents – to do the same, which means that at least some of your emails are going to be exchanged in the clear. And as this fascinating Bloomberg report about the surveillance activities of the former Tunisian regime reveals, that creates another kind of vulnerability that concerns not only what you send, but also what you receive:
Asma Hedi Nairi, a former Amnesty International youth coordinator, says e-mails she and her friends exchanged were replaced by messages ranging from random symbols to ads for rental cars. Opponents of the regime toppled in January’s revolution received threatening messages such as “you can run but you can’t hide,” while people with no role in politics found their correspondence snagged if it inadvertently included words flagged as critical of the government. Ammar 404 even damaged reputations by inserting pornographic images in work e- mails and routing intimate photos onto Facebook, Nairi, 23, says.
It's a clever approach, whereby people start to attribute a deep, possibly troubling meaning to what is in fact nonsense, or begin to doubt the trustworthiness of their online contacts.
What makes this story particularly disturbing is that practically all the technology used to carry out this disinformation campaign in Tunisia was provided by Western companies, who seemed to view it as a test run:
Western suppliers used the country as a testing ground. Moez Chakchouk, the post-revolution head of the Tunisian Internet Agency, says he’s discovered that the monitoring industry gave discounts to the government-controlled agency, known by its French acronym ATI, to gain access.
That's yet another reason to resist Net surveillance for any reason (hello, copyright industries): once surveillance equipment manufacturers have their foot in the door it can only be a matter of time before they start extolling the virtues of Tunisia's more thoroughgoing approach to online spying.
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Filed Under: monitoring, propaganda, rewriting, security, surveillance, tunisia
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Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
They seem more than eager to turn this on their own people.
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Re: Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
The World of SOPA/PIPA
If they pass I am hoping a large wave of real civil disobediance occurs.
Sorry but my mom told me my whole life you make the bed you sleep in.
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Re: Re: Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
(*except big banks and CEO's because they create jobs and are doing god's work in other bigger more important ways)
That's why these nut bags hate the morning after pill.
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Re: Re: Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
God clearly is quite the huckster, probably laughing it up with his Angel friends all the way to the Gates mansion.
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Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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It's your fault. Fuck you.
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Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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Re: Re: Tunisia? Still exists? WTF?
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This country sounds like the NBC IT Department.
But, let's just, as an intellectual exercise, take this hysterical article at face value. I think that it's probably just a courtesy, and she's acting like it's the end of the world.
For instance, say that the government made it illegal to say that anything negative about certain corporations programming choices after a lobbying effort. Now I'm not a lawyer, I can't possibly know all of the nutty laws they've passed and substances they have made illegal to posses.
Now what if I in the course of an email, I was to offend one of our new corporate overlords by lamenting the fact that "Discovery"/"Learning"/"Science" Channel's programming is racing to the bottom of the human debris pile with their newest 'educational' program Punkin Chunkin.
http://science.discovery.com/tv/punkin-chunkin/
Now the software in this case will identify the violation and simply remove it and send me a warning, thus saving me the embarrassment of breaking the law and going to jail. I think it's quite clever and a great way to market a product internationally. Is Techdirt against small business entrepreneurs now?
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Re: This country sounds like the NBC IT Department.
Not sure what we are supposed to do with the "History" Channel.
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Re: Re: This country sounds like the NBC IT Department.
Look I'm all about Hitler specila, but enough is enough, how many Hitler retrospectives can one channel possibly produce? What about all the other mass murder war mongers, like the Bush family for instance?
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Given enough time and monkeys, anything could happen, the trick is making it happen now.
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Re: Re: Re: This country sounds like the NBC IT Department.
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Put simply you are slipping.
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Nuke'em all, and shoot'em when the glow at night.
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How charmingly Orwellian!
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